Faced With Gun Violence in Its Stores, Walmart Turns to Fantastical Thinking

From Esquire

America is the land of magical thinking, where your wildest dreams come true and everyone's a pre-millionaire. It has its downsides, though. Our collective reaction to crisis is not just panic but delusion, where we spin fairytales to protect our innocence even when the answers are right in front of us. The man who committed a massacre at an El Paso Walmart, for instance, was very clear about why he did it in a revolting screed he published online. He believed there was an "invasion" of brown people storming into this country—a talking point you can find any night of the week on Fox News or the presidential Twitter feed—and decided to murder people to try to stop it. He reportedly told police he set out to kill as many Mexicans as he could.

Yet various Republican leaders spent the aftermath prevaricating about how this was about mental health or violent video games. Anything but guns. Anything but the xenophobic hate that the President of the United States has stoked for years now. It seems Walmart itself has fallen in line with this strategy. The retail behemoth stopped selling semi-automatic rifles in 2015, and after the Parkland shooting it stopped selling to those under 21. But after 22 people were murdered and 24 more were injured with a gun at one of its stores, it did not take the next step of halting gun sales entirely. No, as USA Today reports, it went the route of magical thinking.

This might be deliberate but it's not very thoughtful. There is zero evidence linking violent video games to mass shootings or even real-world violence in general, just like there's none linking movies to it. This is made-up, and it's low-energy fantastical thinking. This is recycled stuff from the '90s. But notice Walmart has not opted to stop selling violent video games. That would impact the bottom line, just like it would to stop selling guns—which, of course, are the actual X-factor in America's gun-violence epidemic. We have more guns—and more guns per capita—than any other developed country and many more gun deaths. Areas of the country that have more guns have higher rates of homicide. Homes with guns have higher rates of homicide and suicide.

It's not complicated. But admitting this would mean you might have to stop selling guns. The First Law of American Life holds true: if you're wondering why something's happening in this country, ask who's making money off of it.

Walmart really ought to think about it, though, and not just because, as the nation's largest retailer, its withdrawal from selling instruments of death could have a profound effect on the gun business and the gun debate. There's a bit of a theme developing, you see.

This one ended without any more Americans getting killed at a Walmart. But there is a wildness out in the country and it is running loose. A man who appeared to be a die-hard supporter of the president showed up at an El Paso migrant center armed to the teeth on Thursday. This country is going mad, and it's awash in guns. Other nations look at ours and rightfully assess that we are not OK. Someone must put a stop to this, and it can't be done with fantastical thinking. We know what the problem is, and it ain't Grand Theft Auto.

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